1/26/2024 0 Comments Ben franklin flying a kiteHis reputation had already been made, not merely by proposing the "Philadelphia experiment," as the French work had become known and by flying his kite, but also by his one-electricity theory, which was the first to convincingly explain the action of the Leyden jar - a device used to create and store electric energy. After learning about the French work, Franklin furnished brief accounts of his kite flight, which he merely framed as a more convenient technology for performing the same experiment. Generally following Franklin's plan, French investigators successfully performed the experiment in May 1752. In his book Franklin had proposed a critical yet complex experiment for demonstrating the identity of lightning and electricity. To fabricate an experiment after gaining such acceptance would have been a foolish move, and Franklin was no fool. Indeed, by the time the kite flight took place (in June of 1752), Franklin's book on electricity had already been published in London and was garnering the respectful attention of natural philosophers. It is doubtful that Franklin would have crafted a piece of fictional science, for he appreciated the penalty that the gentlemanly establishment of natural philosophy would have meted out had the fraud been exposed: banishment from the realm he had just entered on good terms. By this illogic we would conclude that some of the twentieth century's greatest physicists were also scientific hoaxers. Thus, the argument runs, if Franklin and the truth were easily parted in one literary realm (popular culture), then they must in others as well (natural philosophy). In Franklin's literary efforts, in the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard's Almanac, he revealed a wily sense of humor that extended at times to merging fact and fiction. The major support for his thesis rests on a flimsy argument by analogy. In disputing the received view, Tucker fashioned a creative case against Franklin that is far from convincing. ![]() Tucker's cynical thesis, however, is not shared by other Franklin scholars, including his scientific biographer, the late I. ![]() Was Benjamin Franklin's account of a kite flight a scientific fraud? Yes, says Tom Tucker, author of Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin and his Electric Kite Hoax ( Parsecs, 2003).
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